Astronaut Greg Chamitoff, Ph.D.: Dr. Chamitoff joins us at Digital Hollywood and will hold workshops on October 11th concerning his VR/AR Space Design Project called, SpaceCRAFT. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Greg Chamitoff served as a NASA Astronaut for 15 years, including Shuttle Missions STS-124,

134 and Space Station long duration missions Expedition 17 and 18. He has lived and worked in Space for almost 200 days as a Flight Engineer, Science Officer, and Mission Specialist. His last mission was on the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, during which he performed two spacewalks, including the last one of the Shuttle era which also completed the assembly of the International Space Station. Chamitoff earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cal Poly, M.S. in Aeronautics from Caltech, and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. He also holds a Minor and a Masters in Planetary (Space) Science. Prior to selection by the NASA Astronaut Program in 1998, Chamitoff worked at Four Phase Systems, Atari Computers, Northern Telecom, IBM and Draper Laboratory. As a Draper Fellow he worked on several NASA projects, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Space Shuttle autopilot, and the attitude control system for Space Station Freedom. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Sydney, Australia, before joining Mission Operations at the Johnson Space Center, where he worked on attitude control and maneuver optimization for the International Space Station (ISS). He is an author of NASA’s first technology memo on resource utilization on Mars, and is currently publishing the first textbook on Human Spaceflight Operations. As an Astronaut, he has been Lead CAPCOM in Mission Control, and supported ongoing missions in numerous other roles. In 2002, Chamitoff was a crew member on the NEEMO-3 Mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), living and working on the Aquarius undersea research habitat for 9 days. Dr. Chamitoff is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Director of the AeroSpace Technology Research & Operations (ASTRO) Center at Texas A&M University.

Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens are a writing/producing team who have created, written, and produced television in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and have been honored with a Constellation Award for “Outstanding Canadian Contribution to Science Fiction Film or Television” for creating the sci-fi series, Primeval: New World. Another of their television projects was literally out of this world: Race to Mars, a four-hour miniseries for Discovery Channel Canada and the Science Channel. Judith and Garfield worked with more than seventy scientific and technical advisors to create the dramatic story of the first human mission to Mars in the year 2031. The Toronto Star praised the miniseries as “a tautly written tale that simply zings with tension… a dramatic winner.” Judith's and Garfield's familiarity with Mars arose, in part, from their acclaimed non-fiction book: Going to Mars: The Stories of the People Behind NASA’s Mars Missions, Past, Present, and Future. The book was co-written with Brian Muirhead of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, former Flight Systems Manager for the Mars Pathfinder mission, and now JPL’s Chief Engineer. In genre media, Judith and Garfield were writer/producers on the fourth season of Enterprise, for which AintItCool.com called their episode, “The Forge,” “not only the best episode of Enterprise, but the best episode of Star Trek.” Well-known to the Star Trek community, the couple have written four acclaimed non-fiction books detailing the production history of the franchise, and provide commentaries for the Blu-Ray editions of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: The Final Frontier. In the world of movies, their most recent production is Aliens Ate My Homework for Universal, based on the Rod Allbright & The Galactic Patrol YA novels by Bruce Coville. The first Galactic Patrol movie will be released as a Netflix Original in March, 2018, and the Reeves-Stevens are now at work on the sequel, I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X. Judith and Garfield are also New York and Los Angeles Times bestselling authors whose novel, Icefire, was praised by Stephen King as “a hardwired, totally riveting, dare-you-to-put-it-down story of disaster, heroism, and suspense. There’s no need for techno-thriller fans to wait for the next Clancy or Coonts; Icefire is the best suspense novel of its type since The Hunt for Red October.” In addition to writing television, features, and novels, Judith and Garfield also work with the Disney Imagineers on an ongoing basis. For the Shanghai Disneyland Resort which opened in 2016, Judith and Garfield were “Lead Land Writers” to develop concepts, stories, and attractions for the park’s Adventure Isle section. Currently with the Imagineers, they are involved in creating entire park concepts and future attractions. Judith and Garfield began their writing careers as science and technology educators and have served on a NASA Space Policy Workshop with “distinguished forward-thinking individuals” including then Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Charles Elachi, NASA Chief Scientist, astronaut John Grunsfeld, and filmmaker James Cameron. They are dual U.S./Canadian citizens who work in Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Toronto.

Jeffrey Kluger is the Editor at Large for Time magazine and Time.com, principally covering science and social issues. His most recent nonfiction book is Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon, which will be published in May, 2017. His most recent novel is Freedom Stone, a young-adult tale set on a South Carolina plantation in 1863, published in 2011. He is the author of seven other books, including Apollo 13—coauthored with Jim Lovell—which served as the basis of the 1995 movie. In his time at Time, Kluger has written hundreds of stories, including more than 40 cover stories. He has appeared regularly on CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC and others. He has also made guest appearances on The Colbert Report and Late Night With Seth Meyers. Before coming to Time, Kluger worked for Discover magazine, where he was a senior editor and humor columnist. Prior to that, he was health editor at Family Circle magazine and Associate Editor at Science Digest magazine. He is a licensed—though non-practicing—attorney; and is a graduate of the University of Maryland and the University of Baltimore School of Law. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughters.

Liam Young is an architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is founder of the urban futures think tank Tomorrows Thoughts Today, a group whose work explores the possibilities of fantastic, perverse and imaginary urbanisms. With TTT he has consulted and conducted workshops on speculation, emerging technologies and future forecasting for firms including Arup- Drivers for Change, Phillips Technologies, BBC, the film industry and various arts and science organisations. His projects include ‘Under Tomorrows Sky’ a science fiction movie set for a fictional future city developed through collaborations with scientists and technologists and ‘Electronic Countermeasures’, a swarm of quadcopter drones that drift through the city broadcasting a pirate internet and file sharing hub. He also runs the ‘Unknown Fields Division’, an award winning nomadic workshop that travels on annual expeditions to the ends of the earth to investigate unreal and forgotten landscapes, alien terrains and industrial ecologies. Unknown Fields have developed projects through expeditions from the Ecuadoran Amazon and the Galapagos Islands to far north Alaska, the mining landscapes of the Australia Outback, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liam also coordinates events and exhibitions including the multimedia series ‘Thrilling Wonder Stories: Speculative Futures for an Alternate Present’ and is a curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Liam’s projects develop fictional speculations as critical instruments to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological futures. Liam’s inherently collaborative design approach means his work is diverse in its scale and nature. He has been acclaimed in both mainstream and architectural media, including the BBC, NBC, Wired, Time, and Dazed and Confused. Liam was named by Blueprint magazine as one of 25 people who will change architecture and design.

Marty Perlmutter, Technologist & Social Activist: Marty Perlmutter is currently working on the campaign to save Africa’s elephants, using social media and Virtual Reality to create programming and consciousness to reduce demand for ivory in China. Marty’s education nonprofit, Multisensory Interactive Learning, is developing mobile math games. The first in the series, “Tangram Jam,” is available for Apple and Android devices. He has worked in interactive media for over four decades. He invented an immersive display helmet in 1970 and later incorporated 3D TV in a series of science museum exhibits. He created interactive products for IBM, AT&T, HP, Pioneer, Mindscape, AOL, Looksmart and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His interactive and education work has won awards in the US, Japan and Europe. Perlmutter built long-lasting interactive exhibits at the Boston Museum of Science, Lawrence Hall of Science and New York Hall of Science. He has consulted to HBO, Sony, Xerox, AT&T, MIT, Harvard, NYU, UC, Ericsson, BT and Mass General Hospital. He has lectured at Harvard and MIT and taught at Tufts, NYU, San Francisco State and Cogswell College. His writings on new media have been widely published.

Seth Shapiro, Governor, Interactive Media, The Television Academy: Two-time Emmy® Award winner Seth Shapiro is a leading advisor in business innovation, media and technology worldwide. He has worked with clients including The Walt Disney Company, Comcast, DIRECTV, Intel, IPG, NBC, Showtime, RTL, Telstra, Universal, Slamdance Studios, Goldman Sachs, government bodies, NGOs and a wide range of new ventures. Shapiro is an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is a Governor of the Television Academy, and sits on its Executive Committee. Shapiro has served as a frequent Expert Witness, including before the FCC, and has been quoted in publications including The Economist, The New York Times. The LA Times, The Boston Globe, Bloomberg, The Associated Press, PBS and The Daily Mail UK. As Head of Production at DIRECTV Advanced Services, he launched over 25 services, including TiVo by DIRECTV, the world’s first major DVR platform. His book “Television: Innovation, Disruption, and the World’s Most Powerful Medium” will be released in June of 2016. Shapiro sits on the Annenberg Research Council and the Producer Guild's New Media Council. He is a Magna cum Laude graduate of New York University and was Adelbert Alumni Scholar at Case Western Reserve University.